Welcome to another edition of Q&A. We
finally put up our 2011 awards, and I highly
recommend everyone check them out here.
There are a number of surprising winners! In
other news, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is
still amazing.

Without further delay, on to the letters and
tweets!

The Letters

Zelda: Ocarina of Failing

Hey Poppa Wheelie!

I keep telling myself I'll write in again
and I keep forgetting!
Oh well,
at least I'm not as bad as some people...

Wheels

I
know right! It's like some
people are so terrible they'll
forget to write in for months,
and then when they finally do
all they come up with is some
insane RPG crossover between Rayman
and Mario. Wait a
minute...

I'd like to weigh in on Soul Hackers,
if I may. Simply put, the
game is awesome and you are all missing. It
also contains one of my
favorite demon conversations in the series,
which goes something like
this:

Demon: Hey, hey, I know you!
Me: You do?
Demon: Yeah, you're that superhero,
Captain Fantastic! Right? (note:
this
is an in-game comic book character
Me: Um, yeah? (lying through my teeth)
Demon: Ooh, ooh! Can I have your
autograph?
Me: Okay...
Demon: [player name]? Oh, that must be
your secret identity! That's so
cool! Can I come with you?
Me: Sure!
(Demon joins the party)

Wheels

Man,
we really did miss out on this
one didn't we? I'm still holding
out hope a lot of these older
games will eventually be remade
or ported in such a way that
they could be localized. I
wonder if we had gotten more of
the Shin Megami Tensei games
back in the PS1 era whether the
series would have gotten popular
a lot earlier. Oh well, better
late than never, right?

The demon loyalty system in that game takes
a little getting used to.
There are five personality types, with each
species of demon having a
set
personality. Violent demons like physical
attacks. Crafty demons prefer
magic. Kindly demons are good for healing,
while foolish demons just do
whatever. Finally, calm demons quickly
assess the situations and do
what
works best.

Wheels

Sounds
like something some of the newer
games could expand upon. I've
always liked the various
alignments of the demons you
acquire, but it'd be cool if you
had to manage their
personalities as well. Sounds
like you don't directly control
them though?

Loyalty kicks in when you try to give
orders. If the order doesn't jive
with the demon's personality, then there's a
chance it will refuse, and
its
loyalty goes down one notch. Give it a
command that it likes, and
loyalty
goes up. The higher the loyalty, the less
likely the demon is to
refuse. The toughest demons to use this way
are the calm demons, since
they prefer
tactical thinking. Whereas you can use
certain preferred commands over
and
over on the other four, the calm personality
requires the player to
know
when best to use multi-hit or elemental
attacks, which can be difficult
if
you're playing in another language.

Wheels

I
see. That sounds like a really
cool system. Why didn't this
game make its way over again?
Here's hope that at some point a
port shows up in the US, or at
the very least someone completes
a fan translation. I really want
to play this one!

But now for something completely different!
Did you read my challenge
on
December 30th? It's holiday-themed game
time. I specified Christmas,
but
it's a little late for that so I guess any
holiday will do. Write in
fast,
as I'll be sending you my own next week. And
include a plot synopsis
this
time, okay?

Your fellow columnist,
Gaijin

Wheels

I
did, but as usual, completely
forgot about it! I'll get to
that as soon as possible. I'll
be away this weekend so perhaps
I can come up with something
during that time. Looking
forward to seeing what you came
up with!

God of Trickery

@AskWheels Why is Zelda the
best "RPG"? #YesThisOldDebate

Wheels

How
is it an old debate? Skyward
Sword just came out two
months ago. Certainly there's an
argument there, but it leans
more to the RPG side of things
than any other game in the
series. What really strikes me
is that people went to this
argument first, and no one
brought up Dissidia
as a possible non-RPG. I
mean really, just let the Zelda
thing go people. What's
the big deal?

ARGGG. This
list is
making me mad. Mad about video games! I hate
getting mad at video
games! >:(

We
don't cover import RPGs in these
awards. I think only a few on
staff are able to read Japanese.
Besides that I'm pretty sure it
came after our cutoff for
releases, so it wouldn't show up
until next year's awards. So
there!

Back in my day an RPG was an RPG and not any
old thing you said it was.

Wheels

I
don't think we listed any old
thing as an RPG, I mean it's not
like we listed Battlefield
3 as an RPG or
something.

I'm saying why is Persona 2
listed THRID?!?

Wheels

Hey,
that game has lost a bit with
its age. I think that had we
gotten it the year it originally
came out it would have been
received with much more fanfare.
I mean its not likely it was
completely off the PSP list. I
think you're being a bit harsh
towards Trails
in the Sky.

Listen
you, I'll have you know that
only one of those is an RPG. Can
you guess which one I mean? No,
not NCIS you fool!

Chrono Souls

I was gonna start some beef w/your space
ship CC
ost cuz hey! you didn't even
pick the best remix of the trigger
theme (which for the record, is this one
) but then I got to listening to the entire
soundtrack for like the
bajillionth time

Wheels

You
know I was thinking about this,
and I have to wonder, why would
we only be able to send one song
into space? MP3s are pretty
small files, why couldn't we
just load up a flash drive with
the whole soundtrack and send
that out there. Seems to me that
would solve the whole issue of
trying to pick a single song! So
that's my answer, screw the one
song, let's send the whole
thing!

After 6 weeks i'm finally to the point where
i can play games again and
I'm going straight back to Dark Souls
(<3). game can do know wrong, although I
don't think its as
freaky/creepy as Demon's was. Demon's
had
the plague of babies

-Cara

Wheels

I
can agree with that. I believe
Dark Souls to be a much
better game, but it misses a bit
of the creep factor that was
present in Demon's
Souls. I remember I
often referred to it almost as a
survival horror RPG, especially
when playing the creepy dungeon
level. If they make another Souls
game I think that's the one
thing I'd like to see them do
more of. More areas like that
creepy dungeon please!

The Root of All Evil

OK Wheels, this week I want RPG villains as
trees :D

Wheels

RPG villains as tress you say? Well
that's easy! I can just pick a
villain who is a tree and then be
done with it! I choose ExDeath!

in that case I want five of them ¬_¬

@severinmira

Wheels

Alright never mind that then, I can
only think of three tree villains!
Alright, Kefka is like a bamboo
tree. On first glance it may seem
thin and fragile, but in actuality
it hides an extremely strong
construction that can be very
dangerous if you aren't careful.
Alright that was terrible but it was
the best I could do!

IN
CLOSING

That's it for this week, I'm off to play
some Breath
of Fire and even more Mega Man.